Wales’ Brexit bunker waits to come to life
IT’S a standard-looking double door made of light wood and with glass panels. To get to it you need the right clearance to get into the Welsh Government building in Cathays in Cardiff and know the way down the right corridors and down stairs until you reach the sign reading “situation room”.
Right now it’s eerily quiet with the computers off, phones silent, and whiteboards bare. But 14 days before Brexit it will come to life.
Under the A4 signs on the walls the relevant teams from the health, fire, military, and police sectors will take their seats.
Officially, this is the Emergency Coordination Centre Wales (ECCW).
In shorthand, it’s the Brexit bunker. There are three rooms – the situation room, conference room, and partners room.
None have windows and on a normal day all could be mistaken for any other office anywhere in Wales – except the ones here are only ever used in a crisis.
When firefighters went on strike, during the foot and mouth crisis, and when the Beast from the East brought the country to a halt this room was used to coordinate the response.
But even those who spent their working lives planning on the official response to disasters have no doubt Brexit will be the biggest challenge.
In the centre of the situation room is a large table covered in a huge map of Wales under glass. It’s not a huge jump to image it covered in model trucks or people, a croupier stick laid on top to move them as required.
Around the edge are banks of desks with each grouping known as “cells” – a situation, response, director and logging cell – each with their own specific tasks. All senior civil servants have been put on the rota to work within the bunker.
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BORIS Johnson’s first bid for an early general election has failed and Parliament has passed legislation which would require the Prime Minister to delay Brexit if a deal is not in place by October 19.
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For Brexit the neighbouring partners room will be filled with the civil contingency team – experts from the fields of health, transport, and agriculture as well as communications staff. Next door is the conference room which is dominated by a huge table. Microphones hang from the ceiling while there are large screens on the wall and keypads.
A red metal dragon on the table is the only hint you’re in a Welsh Government building.
The things you can’t see are the high-tech communications, which mean Welsh Government ministers can communicate with Westminster emergency response committee Cobra securely.
This room is yet to be used in a Brexit context but, once it begins, it will be used every day. The exact “daily rhythm” of how the teams and rooms work together is expected to fall into place within hours as it is well-rehearsed.
Brexit planning began the day after the referendum in 2016 but specific no-deal contingency planning started in July 2018 as the prospect of crashing out of the EU without an agreement in place became a very real prospect.
The task was to keep Wales running “business as usual”.
The rooms were due to become operational 24/7 from mid-March with staff working shifts.
However as the leaving date was pushed back to October 31 it was paused. After a break the process began again in May.
Now, as Westminster wrestles with what to do about Brexit, steps to make the bunker operational are go again.
“Right now we’re identifying staff who will be coming down here,” I’m told by a senior civil servant as we sit
The Government has tabled another motion under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act on Monday which seeks to trigger an early general election.
Boris Johnson failed in his bid to do the same earlier in the week, but he could have better luck now the Bill to delay Brexit looks set to receive Royal Assent.
However, Labour, the Lib Dems, SNP and Plaid Cymru are all understood to be planning on voting against or abstaining from the vote at the huge conference table.
“We’ll also be sending some staff to London. By 14 days before we will move some people down here and they’ll be working normal days.
“With two weeks to go we’ll be running it from 6am until 10pm to get ourselves into the rhythm and processing the information in the right way.
“Then, seven days before, we’ll go to 24/7 operation with three shifts of staff.”
It’s estimated by the time it’s fully operational there will be between 150 and 200 staff working in the bunker. The Welsh Government is now firmly planning for no deal.
“Our approach, as a Welsh Government, has been to plan and get the right processes in place across the public sector so that, whatever happens, we’re ready,” the same civil servant said.
There are, I’m told, two options as the October 31 deadline approaches.
One is that they “pull the red button” putting the whole emergency protocol into place and begin operating from the bunker.
Or they will stand staff down again as they had to in March.
There are whole teams of people whose job is to prepare for situations we would all consider at best unpalatable and at worst truly terrifying – terrorism, strikes, life-threatening weather. Some of the things in place for Brexit would kick in if any of those happened. But they are usually across a single area – say policing or farming.
A no-deal Brexit will involve every team and has included work from every civil servant employed by the Welsh Government.
“This is unique in terms of longevity. With foot and mouth it was on a very significant scale but not quite the same as this,” the civil servant said. A flow chart shows just how many people will be working to feed information into these rooms. – making it very tricky for the PM to achieve the required two-thirds majority.
■ MPs back a general election after Parliament returns
Parliament is due to be prorogued next week, but MPs could agree to head to the polls after it has returned on October 14.
Labour may table a motion of no confidence in the Government in a bid to achieve this, or the Government may have another go with the Fixed-term Parliaments Act.
In Wales, there are four local resilience forums operating in the four police areas. For Brexit each of them has carried out their own (secret) assessments of potential problems in their areas and mitigations.
As it became clear food supplies would be impacted by leaving the EU it was down to them to work with their local councils to plan the impact on schools and vulnerable people like those who receive Meals on Wheels.
When the Brexit bunker goes operational those groups will also be working 24/7.
It will be up to the police to monitor and respond to any demonstrations, riots, or protests.
Although, like everything, that is fed back anything that needs to be contained in the “situation reports” will be and those will land on the desks of the most senior staff gathered around the conference table.
However, any of the things via the ECCW are in place are a backstop “if
There is little doubt in Westminster that an election is imminent, but it is unclear when the opposition will agree the time is right to head to the polls – and they may want to wait until a Brexit extension has been secured.
■ Boris Johnson triggers a no confidence motion in his own government
If opposition MPs refuse to back any government moves to force an election, Mr Johnson may make the extraordinary decision to trigger a everything else goes wrong” because the planning is to ensure there can be “business as usual”.
If it will come into play it will be because the shock which is expected is “so significant it can’t be managed locally”.
For example councils and police plan for snow disruption every winter. However during the Beast from the East in February last year it became so major the local teams couldn’t cope and systems kicked in.
As the Brexit deadline has changed the potential for there to be “concurrent issues” has changed.
“It’s quite a different sort of planning for October than it was in March,” said the civil servant. “It’s a different time of the growing cycle so the food problems are different and with farming it’s when lambs go to market.”
This week Mark Drakeford took a press conference where he warned a no-deal Brexit would have an “immediate impact”. confidence motion in his own administration.
He would effectively be daring opposition politicians to back him, and hoping that no other potential governments emerged which could command a majority in the Commons – running the risk of a caretaker government taking power.
If a new government cannot be formed within 14 days, Parliament would be dissolved and an early general election triggered.
■ Boris Johnson asks Brussels for a